and GroundUp. On 2 June 2014, 52-year-old Phindile Ramncwana lay dying at a neighbour’s house in Sada, a rural township in the former Ciskei region of the Eastern Cape. As Esther Kasam tended to him, she recoiled at the sight of blood and vomit in a five-litre container on the floor beside his bed. Ramncwana retched when he tried to eat. He complained of stabbing pains in his stomach, Kasam recalled during a recent interview. “Phindile, what did you say when they were hitting you?” Kasam had asked. “I was crying a lot. I asked what I had done to be beaten like this. I begged for forgiveness,” came his response.